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| India-Pakistan |
| Pakistani madrassa reform is a sham. Wotta surprise |
| 2006-04-07 |
| Although the Pakistani government vowed to reform the country's 13,000 madrassas or Islamic seminaries, little has actually changed. After the London bombings in July, when it was confirmed that two of the suicide bombers had travelled to Pakistan before the attacks and one of them was also shown to have visited a Pakistani madrassa, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said that all foreign students in the madrassas, some 1,400 of them, had to leave the country by the end of 2005. Months after the pronouncement, and after fierce opposition from Pakistan's religious parties, the reality on the ground is different. "Visas are no longer issued to foreign students," Fayaz Ali Khan, the additional inspector general of police in the southern port city of Karachi told Adnkronos International (AKI). But Khan, head of the Special Branch, in-charge of intelligence and issuing the visas, admitted that "there are foreign students already present in the madrassas and they have been allowed to complete their studies". However these steps back from the promises made to the West do actually correspond to an internal logic. Musharraf cannot deal with a full confrontation with the religious parties in the country that control the government in two out of four provinces and have a significant influence in the national parliament. Currently, the federal government is in the middle of a troubling military stand-off, both in the south-western province of Baluchistan with clashes between Pakistani troops and tribal rebels as well as major offensives in the tribal region of Waziristan which lies on the Afghan-Pakistan border against pro-Taliban militants. The unrest can prove lethal for Musharraf, who the West see as the moderate force within Pakistan. One of the more important madrassas in Karachi and among the largest in Pakistan, the Jamiatul Uloom Islamia of Binori Town, the school in which a large part of the Taliban studied, denies the pronouncements made by Islamabad. ‘"It is not true that foreign students are not allowed," said Abdul Razzak Sekandar, the elderly rector in Binori Town, in an interview with AKI. "Those who are already here remain and new students continue to arrive," he said. Sekandar, who remembers his participation in 2004 at an Islamic religious seminar in Rome, also attended by Vatican and Italian government representatives, cites the UN charter which states that people should be allowed to study and practice their religion. What's more, Sekandar argues, "foreign engineering and medicine students are allowed to come here to study, so why should be prevent those wishing to study religion." To give an idea of the importance of Binori Town, the temple of the Deobandist school of Sunni orthodoxy - the most radical on the subcontinent - a few figures suffice. Some 2,2000 students ranging in age from 5-20 years study and live on the premises. Binori Town alone controls another 16 major Koranic schools in Karachi and hundreds across Pakistan: It is an economically independent and hard to control entity, which has made its influence felt in the organisation of recent mass demonstrations against the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, published by a Danish newspaper, and deemed offensive to many Muslims. "There were acts of violence, that is true" Sekandar admits, "but not by our students. On the contrary, the government appreciated our moderation." However without calling into question the severe cordiality and good faith of Sekandar, not so long ago it was here that Osama Bin Laden reportedly met Mullah Omar, a regular guest was Omar Sheikh, the organiser of the kidnapping and killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl. Binori Town in recent years has had two of its mufti murdered, possibly victims of the unstoppable flow of reciprocal violence with the Shiite community, but also perhaps due to their own intransigence. The last rector, Nizamuddin Shamzai, killed two years ago on the steps of the madrassa, had issued a fatwa against Pakistani troops engaged alongside US forces hunting down Taliban and al-Qaeda figures in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. There are rumours that the powerful intelligence services (ISI) sent one of their hitmen to eliminate him. Sekandar rejects any accusations of terrorism. "We believe in all the prophets and if a Muslim rejects one then he is outside Islam. The problem with the Jews and the Christians is that they believe in only one prophet. So who is the extremist?" He puts it down to "misconception" of madrassas by the West. A similar concept was expressed recently by the religious affairs minister Ejaz ul-Haq, tasked with overseeing the reform of the madrassas. "No madrassa in the past has been involved in terrorism" he stated. Ul-Haq, son of the late dictator, Zia ul-Haq, who from the 1970s began the forced Islamisation of 'Pakistan and gave a decisive push to the uncontrolled proliferation of the Koranic schools, also said that "the registration process is proceeding". In reality, according to independent estimates, only 3,000 out of 13,000 madrassas have to date responded to the census imposed by the government. This system grew beyond all reasonable control during the years of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when, with the support of the various Pakistani regimes and funding from Saudi Arabia, hundreds of thousands of young mujahadeen were indoctrinated and sent off to fight the Russians. Then after the 11 September, 2001 attacks in the US, the madrassas found themselves transformed overnight into dangerous jihadi assembly lines, in the eyes of the West, at least. "Not all madrassas are extremist" said Pakistan's 'general-dictator', as Sekandar refers to Pervez Musharraf. The rector says he met the president several weeks earlier to discuss reforms and urged him to press the United Nations on the wave of the cartoon protests around the world, to adopt a resolution condemning blasphemy against all religions. Musharraf is depicted as an enemy for his desire [so far not realised] to put the madrassas in order, keeping tabs on who studies there, obliging them to teach modern subjects such as English and science and making them provide information on where they receive funding. But he is also perceived as an interlocutor in the joint committee where representatives of government and of the five main theological schools that own madrassas meet to discuss the reforms. 'Planet madrassa' has become over the years an anomalous slice of Pakistan's non-existent welfare state, offering board, lodging and instruction, even if education is limited to studying the Koran, to 1.7 million Pakistani children, mainly from poor families. It is free, as it is funded by Islamic charity, making up for the state' incapacity of provide education and support for Pakistanis of school age. Children from five years of age learn the Koran by heart, repeating litanies of Arab verse, without understanding what it all means, only to have it explained through the filter of mullahs who are not always enlightened. The equation madrassa = terrorism is undoubtedly a gross generalisation, but the problem remains serious, with the risks that generations of young people in Pakistan continue to grow up in a climate of diffidence and misunderstanding of the West- if not of outright hate towards all things Western . The International Crisis group, a respected think tank which is generally attentive to and critical of power in Pakistan, wrote in a recent report: "Militancy is only one part of the madrassa problem. The jihadi phenomenon is independent of them and most jihadis do not come from these schools. The pro-jihad madrassas limit themselves to supporting the Jihadi movement, mainly in terms of recruitment. Most schools do not provide any military training, but sew the seeds of extremists in the minds of students." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #7 MODERATORS: Zenster's post has been copied and sent to Homeland Security's tip desk, as genocide advocacy. I see a lot of that here. "Glazed over" means: attacked by N-weapons. Fred Pruitt must wear a Nazi uniform in the privacy of his rooming house. What a fucking piece of shit. Fuck all of you degenerate freaks. No wonder Germans are attacking your website. You pigs deserve it, and each other. FUCK YOU ALL. |
| Posted by: Noamist 2006-04-07 16:48 |
| #6 Suddenly, I got nothin' to say. |
| Posted by: Yusef Islam 2006-04-07 05:03 |
| #5 heh heh perfesser |
| Posted by: 6 2006-04-07 21:20 |
| #4 This fellow will full a madrassa of his own... As reported in an Urdu daily newspaper, Maulvi Mohammad Afzal, 40, has succeeded in fathering 48 children off his four wives. The maulvi is a primary school teacher in Lahore and has been blessed with 24 pairs of twins, each wife having always given birth to two babies at a time. The maulvi has now moved the Lahore High Court, through his learned council M D Tahir, advocate, to be allowed to take a further five wives so that he can father more pairs of twins with a view to entering the Guinness Book of Records. The maulvi has further petitioned the Government of Pakistan for a special and handsome stipend to support his burgeoning family. The petition is now before the honourable judges of the Lahore High Court and they are considering the plea of the portly maulvi who in the picture accompanying the news report appears to be the very essence of piety with his flowing facial hair, skull cap and pudgy, frowning countenance. |
| Posted by: john 2006-04-07 20:51 |
| #3 Please, allow me to comment without troubling the moderator. [ON-TOPIC, YET ABUSIVE COMMENTS DELETED]. Thank you for your kind attention. |
| Posted by: Perfesser 2006-04-07 20:05 |
| #2 Fayaz Ali Khan, the additional inspector general of police First step; kill everyone named "Khan." Quite the troublesome lot, they are. Actually, this news disillusioned me about as badly as when I found out that Hulk Hogan used steroids. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-04-07 11:27 |
| #1 Seriously, did anyone really believe that Mushy was going to tackle this problem? Allen Akeebar! |
| Posted by: Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-04-07 07:06 |